NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A Louisiana candidate for the U.S. Senate burns a Confederate flag in his latest video ad, released Wednesday.
Gary Chambers, a Baton Rouge community activist and Democrat, is seen hanging a large Confederate battle flag on a line with clothespins before dousing it with fuel and setting it ablaze.
“We must burn what remains of the Confederacy down,” Chambers says in a voiceover as he condemns a system that is “producing measurable inequity,” for Black people, including high rates of poverty and low access to health insurance.
The ad comes three weeks after Chambers’ last major ad, which showed him smoking marijuana. In that ad, Chambers, who is Black, decries racial disparities in arrests for the drug.
The new ad appeared a day after the state Senate rejected a move to create a second majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana. Supporters of a second Black-majority district say two of the state’s six Congressional districts should have Black majorities, noting about a third of the state’s people are Black.
Chambers says in the ad that gerrymandered election districts keeping Black voters underrepresented are “a byproduct of the Confederacy.”
Chambers is one of two Democrats who have announced plans to challenge incumbent Republican Sen. John Kennedy this year. The other is former Navy pilot Luke Mixon.
